The United States and other Western allies, as well as Baghdad, urged Turkey to refrain from military action in northern Iraq after Ankara’s parliament gave permission on Wednesday for an attack on Kurdish separatists there.

“We are making it very clear to Turkey that we don’t think it is in their interests to send troops into Iraq,” President George W. Bush told a news conference. “Actually, they have troops already stationed in Iraq … We don’t think it’s in their interests to send more troops in.”

Since the late 1990s, Turkey has kept small deployments of troops in border areas of northern Iraq from where Kurdish rebels launch attacks in eastern Turkey in a campaign for an independent homeland there. But the presence has been largely discreet and low key.

A recent sharp rise in PKK killings has put Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan under pressure to launch a major operation Washington fears could unleash chaos in the region.

An incursion could stir ethnic conflict in the mainly Kurdish north, endanger oil supplies and deepen U.S. problems in the rest of Iraq.

Bush said in talks with Turkey, Washington was pressing its message that it understands Ankara’s concerns about the Kurdish rebel group but “there’s a better way to deal with the issue than having the Turks send massive troops into (Iraq)”.